Taking a closer look at the full costs of energy acquisition and dissipation

Friday, December 4, 2009

Consider the Source

A lot has been made about the hacked emails fro East Anglia. This is a bad situation for science, but it in no way compromises or places in doubt the work of tens of thousands of good, ethical scientists and their work on global climate change. I have been assaulted by articles and commentaries from such reputable scientific publications as the wall street journal, fox news, rush limbaugh, and redstate.com (SARC). If you are truly interested in Science and not particularly impressed by and/or interested in ideological rantings - start here.

4 comments:

Kahena Joubert
said...

It is unaccpetable for scientists to withold information from the public, especially because global climate change is such a prevalent issue. Regardless of what studies may suggest or prove, people want to know what is going on. The article states that some people believe that these emails have done massive harm to science, but I disagree. There are ample scientists and studies out there that are in agreement with each other. People need to be wary of where they get thier sources and check the credibility of the journals and authors they choose to read before coming to any sort of conclusions.

"It is equally essential to emphasize that alleged problems with a few scientists' behavior do not change the consensus understanding of human-induced, global climate change, which is a robust hypothesis based on well-established observations and inferences."

The emphasis on the scandal at East Anglia appears to be an ill-founded response to the science community's assertion that climate change is real and is due to anthropocentric factors. The scientists in East Anglia messed up. But how does that change the fact that scientist all over the globe STILL believe that humans are conducting an experiment on the world that we do not know we can recover from?

The unethical maneuvers of these scientists at East Anglia University has brought into question the proven work and consensus of a huge number of scientists at a time where popular support is necessary going into Copenhagen. To attempt to have publishers of papers fired because they are critical of your work brings into question the validity of the theory in general, something unfair to the importance of the mitigation crisis. Despite "Scientific Skepticism," there is more than enough proof of climate change and scientists pushing this information to the public must remember to do so ethically and truthfully as fast as is reasonably possible.

A prevalent issue in the global warming and global climate change discussion is the degree to which it is happening. Though the issue might be present, this definitely calls into question the emphasis environmentalists are placing on it. The scientific community needs to look to there work and reaffirm that their work is correct. It will then be there job to restore their reputations. If their theories are truly rooted in fact, with time their work will be accepted again. Until then, the scientific community has to work to restore the faith of the world. Additionally, Science is an ever-evolving and ever changing set of theories that are meant to be proven and dis-proven. If there is evidence that disproves or proves the theories of global climate change, it needs to be presented as publically as possible.